Date: Tue, 28 Dec 1993 12:00:31 -0500 From: [REDACTED] at [thumper.bellcore.com] (Daniel Liebster) To: [net tank] at [ogre.cica.indiana.edu] Subject: exmple of capitalism rendering the WOD unwinnable As long as there is room for entrepreneurial spirt, and an uneven distribution of wealth, the WOD is a waste of resources. It seems only removing the profit from drug trade, or installing pure communism will stop the drug trade. a a PM-HispaniolatotheHeight Adv03 12-27 1193 ^PM-Hispaniola to the Heights I, Adv03,1239< ^$Adv03< ^For release Mon PMs, Jan. 3, and thereafter< ^From Hispaniola to Washington Heights: The Immigrant Dream Gone Awry< ^With AP Photos< EDITOR'S NOTE _ There is a deadly path between the Dominican Republic and Washington Heights in upper Manhattan _ a path followed by young men who want to make money by selling drugs. This, the first of a two-part series, looks at the neighborhood where the drugs go, and where many of its salesmen die. ___ ^By DANA KENNEDY= ^Associated Press Writer= NEW YORK (AP) _ The streets of Washington Heights are not paved with gold _ they teem with drugs and violence. But certain young men in the Dominican Republic, 1,600 miles away, will risk their lives to come here. Their vision of the immigrant American Dream is to amass a fortune by selling drugs, primarily cocaine. Their violent ways overshadow the lives of thousands of Dominicans who hold legitimate jobs. ``They're entrepreneurs and they'll kill you just as soon as look at you if you walk on their turf,'' said Detective Jerry Giorgio of the 34th Precinct, which covers the neighborhood at the northern end of Manhattan. ``These kids come here and find out how lucrative selling drugs can be. They send a message back down to the D.R. _ you may not live past the age of 22 but you'll live like a king.'' Over the past decade, Dominicans have established a thriving cocaine trade worth hundreds of millions of dollars annually, according to federal law enforcement officials. After Dominicans expanded into heroin two years ago, the FBI formed a special investigative squad targeting Washington Heights. ``It's the violence that brought us in to look at this,'' said Charles Domroe, who oversees the squad. ``The Colombians and the Asians are bigger traffickers but none of them are as violent as the Dominicans. The drugs up there have destroyed whole neighborhoods and created so much fear.'' In 1983, there were less than 100,000 Dominicans in Washington Heights; now there are more than 350,000. Crime has risen sharply, especially since crack cocaine hit in 1985. Homicides in the ``three-four'' went from 57 in 1987 to 122 in 1992, topping every other precinct in the city. Last year, there were 98 _ also the highest in New York. Since 1985, more than 400 young Dominicans from one town _ San Francisco de Macoris _ have been killed in the United States, most in drug-related murders in New York. To say nothing of the lives that have been ruined. ___ ``Follow me,'' said a painfully thin, Dominican-born woman named Maria. She walked up the steps of a once elegant brownstone and knocked at an apartment at the end of a dank hallway. The door swung open. The silhouettes of three people could be seen slumped on couches in almost total darkness. A lamp with a bare bulb was hauled out to illuminate a tiny living room with a battered coffee table littered with crack paraphernalia. ``The more you smoke, the more you want,'' said Maria, as she pulled out a knife and began cutting the crack on a mirror on the table. It was a little after 4:30 p.m. As Maria heated the crack in a tiny metal pitcher, the two women and a man seated on shabby sofas watched in a polite stupor, as if she were preparing afternoon tea. The room was quiet except for the hissing sound as Maria lit her pipe and passed it around. Most other like her turn to prostitution, she said, but not her _ she cleans rooms for drug dealers in exchange for drugs. ___ Dozens of Dominican Mafia-like family organizations control drug operations in the Heights, according to the FBI. Drug dealers have taken over whole blocks, particularly at the southern and northern tips of the area, scaring people away from even using pay telephones. Cars are routinely double- and triple-parked on most streets, and salsa music blares night and day on expensive car stereo systems. Young men stand in front of the buildings steering ``clients'' from cars with New Jersey, Connecticut and Pennsylvania license plates into apartments bare except for couches, tables and drug scales. At $30 to $40 a gram, the cocaine in Washington Heights is a bargain, especially for out-of-state customers who might pay up to $20 more per gram where they live. Police have had some success targeting the white suburbanites; more than 300 cars have been seized and 400 people arrested during periodic sweeps at the George Washington Bridge. But stymied by a lack of cooperation from Heights residents, authorities have had less success in cracking down on violence and drug-dealing in the Heights itself. ``In a homicide investigation, nobody saw nothing,'' said Giorgio, the detective. Eddie, 24, a 10th-grade dropout and street-level drug dealer, works the area around 162nd Street and Broadway. He said he usually has a stash of about 200 grams of crack in the apartments he uses. ``You gotta be out here seven days a week to make money,'' said Eddie, who did not want his Spanish name used. On a typical night he can make up to $1,000, he said, ``It's all about not getting caught. You just want to survive another day.'' ___ The words ``ENVIOS DE DINERO'' cover the windows of the dozens of travel agencies in the area, meaning they send money back to the Dominican Republic. Much of the drug profits are sent back or reinvested in cocaine. Dominicans buy from the Colombians, acting as wholesale retailers, said the FBI's Domroe. Both street-level dealers and kingpins commute between the two countries, federal officials say. Unlike the immigrants of yore, many Dominicans dislike New York and sell drugs here in the hope of retiring as millionaires in their homeland. Rafael, 20, a drug dealer who would not give his last name, stood on the corner of 163rd Street and Broadway one night, his eyes red from the effects of the same cocaine he sells. He was dressed in a white linen blazer from the Gap, Calvin Klein jeans and Timberland shoes. ``It's like a tropical Sicily,'' Rafael said dreamily, describing his hometown. ``You can do anything you want down there, go to the social clubs, go swimming, play pool, gamble. I just want to make enough money here to go home and never come back.'' Twenty-three-year-old James ``Kiko'' Garcia did return to the Dominican Republic permanantly, although certainly not in the way he planned. Officials said Garcia was involved with drugs; his family and neighbors said he worked in a grocery store. In July 1991, Garcia was killed by police, setting off six days of rioting in Washington Heights. Garcia's family took him home to bury him. Then, they returned to New York. When Regina Garcia, Kiko's 59-year-old mother, lived in San Francisco de Macoris, she made about $10 per month cleaning rooms in a school. Now she makes $216 a week working in a factory in Hackensack, N.J., enough to rent a two-bedroom apartment with four other sons. ``I have to stay here,'' she says, ``because there's no other way to support my family.'' ^End Adv for Mon PMs, Jan. 3< AP-DS-12-27-93 0938EST< a i PM-HispaniolatotheHeight Adv04 12-27 1199 ^PM-Hispaniola to the Heights II, Adv04,1278< ^$Adv04< ^For release Tues PMs, Jan. 4, and thereafter< ^San Francisco de Macoris: Where Drug Money Brings Wealth and Pain< EDITOR'S NOTE _ The tropical pleasures of San Francisco de Macoris seem worlds away from the violent horrors of upper Manhattan. But this is where many of the young men who sell drugs in Washington Heights come from, and this is where they often return _ wealthy or dead. The final part of a two-part series. ___ ^By DANA KENNEDY= ^Associated Press Writer= SAN FRANCISCO DE MACORIS, Dominican Republic (AP) _ Near a hillside of shacks stands a colony of mansions: Brightly colored stucco homes, with luxury cars in the driveway and satellite dishes soaring overhead. It is a jarring sight on the main street leading into San Francisco de Macoris _ a world of new wealth amid Third World poverty. Authorities say millions of dollars earned by Dominicans in the New York drug trade have flooded this country, the fourth-poorest in the hemisphere. And this town is the nexus of what locals refer to as the ``bad business.'' More than 400 young Dominicans from San Francisco de Macoris _ known as ``Dominican Yorks'' _ have been killed in the United States since 1985, most in drug-related murders in New York. But even more have returned as wealthy young men, transforming what was once a rice-farming center of 65,000 into a menacing haven for drug lords. Mansions and discos have sprung up near hillside shacks where families live in grinding poverty. ``These kids all say the same thing,'' said Julio Gonzalez, 52, who has owned the local radio station for 30 years. ```I'm going up to New York and I'm either coming back with money or in a box.' '' The money has transformed this town: In 1984, there were five banks. Now there are 10. There were two travel agencies, now there are 20. There was one disco, now there are nine. There was one car dealership, now there are six. Fifteen carwashes exist where none did before. But the price for this new prosperity has been steep. Tabloids regularly feature stories of rickety boats capsizing and young men drowning in the shark-infested Caribbean waters as they cross to Puerto Rico on the first step of the journey to New York. Among those who get to New York, the more fortunate return wearing gold chains, wardrobes from the Gap and holding keys to a Lexus. They move into expensive homes in a section of town dubbed ``Little Manhattan,'' where about 600 houses have sprung up on what was empty farmland eight years ago. Others return in coffins. From the airport in Santo Domingo they are driven 85 miles north to the Las Mercedes funeral home here and finally, to the ``Old Cemetery'' in the center of town. The cemetery is so crowded that families must pay rent on burial plots every four years. If they miss a payment, the remains of their loved ones are removed and burned. James ``Kiko'' Garcia, 23, is among those buried here. He was killed by police in Washington Heights, setting off a week of sporadic rioting in 1991. His headstone reads in Spanish, ``Tragically Felled in the City of New York.'' Weekly body counts are dutifully reported in the tabloids and no one is unaware of the risks. It doesn't stop them. ``I'd like to get a decent job in New York but if that doesn't work I'll go into the bad business,'' said Martin Acosta, 23, who sat aimlessly with two friends outside a tiny bodega one weekday. Acosta said he and his friends are unable to find jobs. The average wage for the unskilled here is about $10 a month. Doctors and lawyers make about $200 a month, soldiers $50 a month, taxi drivers $30 a month. ``To tell you the truth,'' said Acosta. ``it's sometimes better to get killed than be a poor person.'' Local officials estimate there are at least 300 drug dealers who keep at least part-time residences in town. They set an ominous tone, one that engenders fear in some and awe in others. ``Things have gotten so horrible there. People from my town have grown so obsessed with money and power it really gives me the chills,'' said a former resident, a doctor who now practices in the United States. The dealers range from 18-year-olds who work by themselves on the streets in Manhattan and commute back and forth, to one well-known dealer who lives behind heavily fortified gates in a shocking pink house in the center of town. His house is guarded by a tall, beefy man with a submachine gun. Locals say that dealers talk freely in bars and on streetcorners about business. ``If someone gets shot in Washington Heights, they'll know about it down here before the police up there do,'' said Pedro Fernandez. Most people in town know who the dealers are and where they hang out. But many dealers were wary of talking to outsiders. Jose, 26, was supervising construction of a small nightclub with a group of others said to be known drug dealers. He wore baggy American jeans, a Lacoste shirt, several gold chains and two gold rings. ``Refrigeration,'' said Jose, when asked what he does in New York. Only a man who gave his name as Aris, 27, admitted that he got the money to open his modest restaurant from six years of selling crack cocaine in Washington Heights. He said he no longer is involved with drugs and cut the interview short. Just blocks from the flashy discos and hamburger joints, where hard-eyed Dominican Yorks in Levi 501 jeans sip El Presidente beers and chain-smoke cigarettes, are desperately poor neighborhoods. Raymond Rodriguez, 19, lives with seven other family members in a two-room, tin-roof shack on the side of a hill. Naked children chase chickens and skeletal dogs in the mud as flies buzz overhead. ``I always think about getting on a boat and going to Puerto Rico,'' said Rodriguez, who added that his grandfather sold drugs in New York ``They say it's good there. There's always work. I'd do whatever I had to do.'' Many local residents bemoan the allure that New York, and the drug business, holds for the youth of San Francisco de Macoris. ``No one wants to go to school. All they think about is going to New York,'' said Pedro Fernandez, 39, a local journalist who was born and raised here but spent 12 years in America. ``They see these guys coming home with money and they want the same thing.'' Several community groups have gone so far as to march through town holding signs reading, ``Get Out, Dominican Yorks. We Don't Want Your Money.'' Not every teen-ager aspires to the drug life. Wilton Garcia, 18, used to sell fruit for a few pesos a day. More recently he got a low-level local government job so he can save money for the trip to New York. His mother, Ahora, 47, proudly displayed a letter attesting to her son's new employment. ``I want him to go to earn money so he can take care of me,'' she said, clutching one of her younger children. Garcia said firmly that he wants to work as a mechanic. ``I don't believe in selling drugs. It's risky. It's not a good idea because they can kill you. It's dangerous.'' ^End Adv for Tues PMs, Jan. 4< AP-DS-12-27-93 0939EST<